When rumors began to circulate in recent weeks that the June 18 Amazon event would in fact be a launch party unveiling the e-commerce company’s new 3D smartphone, the tech world responded with a collective shrug. Hollywood has spent decades working to convince TV and movie audiences that 3D is a thing of the future, if only people were willing to wear a pair of plastic blue-and-red glasses.

Developers and film veterans wondered out loud why the future-focused Amazon, which has teased drone delivery and sparred with struggling book publishers, would try to go down the same path along which so many others have failed. But a 3D phone might actually be crazy enough to work, and possibly be successful enough to change consumer expectations about new products.

Dr. Barry Sandrew – a technology patent owner and the founder, CTO, and COO of Legend3D, which converts 2D video into 3D format – said a smartphone, if developed the right way, could be the perfect entry point for a public ever hungry for a flashy new device.

“I believe that residual stigma attached to 3D came not from bad theatrical 3D conversions but from the consumer electronics industry, which introduced 3D TV too fast and with too much hype,” he said in an email to IBTimes. “Consumers were not ready because there was simply not enough content to make the purchase of a 3D TV worthwhile. In addition, I think it’s clear that the requirement of wearing 3D glasses became a negative issue – due primarily to influence from the media.”

To replicate “Avatar’s” success, and avoid the fate of a colossal flop like “Step Up 3D,” Sandrew said Amazon has no choice but to properly utilize autostereo (a concept that essentially boils down to glasses-free 3D viewing). This technology requires customers to “position themselves within a sweet spot in front of the image so that an overlaid sheet of corrugated ridges accurately refract reflected light to the appropriate eye,” Dr. Sandrew explained.

Advertisers have found success with this “sweet spot” when installing a 3D sign into a casino lobby, for instance, where someone approaching a sign would see it as blurry only to stare directly at it and find a bright, imaginative sign. An Amazon 3D phone could find the same success, with customers having little choice but to stare directly at their screen to use it.

“When applied to single users devices like smartphones, tablets and even laptops, the sweet spot limitation is not as much of an issue because the user typically positions their head in front of the display and can move the device backward and forward from their eyes to get an optimized stereo effect,” Dr. Sandrew went on.

As 3D TV developers have learned the hard way, the autostereo challenge could still be insurmountable for larger screens. Designers would need to conceive of some way to replicate that sweet spot for people sitting in different areas while looking at the same screen in a room.

“I’ve seen some decent quality autostereo video and images on smartphones such as the discontinued HTC 3D phone and I’ve seen adequate autostereo on a handful of tablets that are just making their debut in the market,” Sandrew said. “However it’s been clear that the technology has a long way to go before it can be considered a solid consumer product – that is, hopefully, until now.”

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Barry B. Sandrew, Ph.D.

Founder - Graffiti Video, Inc.

BIOGRAPHY

This is a series of blogs by Barry Sandrew, Ph.D., an internationally recognized inventor, digital imaging expert and visual effects pioneer. Dr. Sandrew is founder of three visual effects facilities that were among the largest and most prolific production studios in Hollywood. Over the past three decades he has been and continues to be instrumental in evolving the entertainment Industry's digital standards and processes in feature filmmaking.

Sandrew earned his doctorate in neuroscience from SUNY at Stony Brook. After winning a 2 year NIH Fellowship at Columbia University, College of Physicians & Surgeons, he joined Harvard Medical School/MGH as staff Neuroscientist. In 1987, Sandrew left his academic and scientific career to found American Film Technologies (AFT) where he invented the first all digital process for colorizing black and white feature films.

At AFT he also invented a paperless animation process used to produce episodic animation for Fox Children's TV and a digital ink & paint and compositing pipeline that produced Spielberg's first digital animated feature film, "We're Back: A Dinosaur Story." Sandrew took AFT public while converting hundreds of movies for clients such as Turner, Disney, Warner Bros., Fox, Gaumont, TF1, ABC, and CBS, among many others.

In 1993 Barry Sandrew left American Film Technologies to co-found Lightspan, an animation and production edutainment studio that grew into one of the largest educational software companies in the U.S., marketing into entire school districts around the country. Lightspan ultimately went public and was later acquired by Plato Learning.

In 2000, Sandrew founded Legend Films, re-inventing colorization and a proprietary film restoration process using the latest in digital imaging technology. Over the course of the next 7 years, Legend Films converted to color approximately 145 black & white films as well as several TV series. Legend Films also produced visual effects for Scorsese's "The Aviator", HBO's "Entourage" and other high profile TV and film projects.

In 2007, with Jim Cameron's game changing "Avatar 3D" scheduled for a 2009 release, Sandrew leveraged his proprietary colorization pipeline, redirecting his company's entire R&D focus to embrace 2D-to-3D conversion and changing the company's name to Legend3D. Since 2010, Legend3D has lead the competitive field, producing 3D conversion and visual effects on over 35 of the highest performing box office tentpole films of the past 6 years.

In 2014, Dr. Barry Sandrew left Legend3D to focus on new immersive and web based media technologies as well his non-profit and for-profit board positions. He is consultant to Fortune 500 companies re: mobile 3D-sensing and motion tracking technology that he considers precursors to augmented reality. Most recently, he is Co-Founder and President/CEO of Graffiti Video, Inc. a company that is redefining the curation of web based media.